There was supposed to be something different about this one. With the sting of last week’s loss, the Thunder were supposed to have something prepared for the Clippers.

Instead, they played almost the exact same game. I say “almost,” only because this one was much, much worse, but in a stupidly similar way. Rather than imploding in the fourth quarter, the Thunder just never came out of the locker room for the second half. Oklahoma City scored 25 total points in the second half. Twenty-five. Twenty, plus five. KD scored 20 by himself in the fourth quarter against the Wolves Saturday. In the third quarter, the Thunder had only 14, all coming via Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins. I thought that was bad. And then OKC scored just 11 in the fourth.

What is there to say? It was the worst half of basketball in probably three seasons. The Thunder missed shots, missed more shots, didn’t run anything resembling a decent offense, missed shots, turned it over, missed shots, didn’t execute, didn’t move the ball, missed shots and then missed some shots. Keep Reading…

It’s obvious what the hook is for this game. So let me club you over the head with it anyway. The Thunder can’t be happy with the way they seemingly gave away a home game to the Clippers last week. Oklahoma City had multiple chances to put the Clippers away, but never seemed able to completely locate the killshot. Which left the door open for Chris Paul to tear out some hearts. Keep Reading…

Four games in six days, three wins. Not all that bad, except the Thunder won the games they absolutely should, and lost a home game against the only good team.

It still feels like there’s a palpable level of anxiety circling the fanbase, but Oklahoma City has won four of five since dropping three straight. The Thunder’s last four losses have been to highly seeded playoff teams. And every game has been decided by two possessions or less.

The Thunder have absolutely been a bit inconsistent with their play since the All-Star break, with wins even leaving an odd taste in fans’ mouths. Plus the fact that they may potentially blow the No. 1 seed in the West is upsetting. But the reality is that it’s the stretch run of the season and OKC is technically in first place and definitely primed as one of the four likely contenders for an NBA title. Should we really all be that upset? Nervous, anxious, tense… yes. But this team is good. It’s just a question of if they’re good enough.

Interesting research from Kirk Goldsberry on where KD likes to score from: “When we look at Durant’s heat map, we can identify more specific areas where he is most and least efficient. In terms of points per attempt, Durant is most efficient near the basket and near the top-of-the-key. There is very little blue on his chart, which is impressive for a 23-year-old guy who shoots a lot from all over the place. If he could work on two things, I might suggest the following: 1) His baseline game. He’s getting a lot of shots there, and he’s tall enough to excel there, but his efficiency is relatively low there compared to other elite longish shooters (e.g. Dirk). 2) That right-side wing (graphic left) 3-point shot. He’s obviously a great 3-point shooter, but his achilles from beyond the arc seems to be here, where he also seems to get a lot of shots.”

Well, it was probably a little more challenging than it should have been, but the Thunder are leaving Minnesota with a win. It would be easy to nitpick this one for issues exposed or blah blah blah, but really, on the road this late in the season, it’s just about winning and moving on.

Yeah, the Wolves shot 50 percent from the field. They scored 110 points on Oklahoma City without Kevin Love. The Thunder missed a number of opportunities to put the Wolves away in the second half, but never could completely finish them off. I think that’s more of a credit to them than it was an indictment on the way OKC played in this game. That’s a sweep of the Wolves and the Thunder’s 12th straight over Minnesota. It’s not easy to beat anyone that much.

To be quite honest, I didn’t get much out of this game other than the fact the Thunder won it, and that it served as a friendly reminder that Kevin Durant is absurdly good at this whole basketball thing. His fourth quarter was stupid. He scored 20 of his 43 (that came on just 23 shots) in the last 12 minutes, with foul trouble benching him for the last eight minutes of the third. He was clearly itching to get back on the floor and do what he was put on Earth to do — score. Keep Reading…

The Wolves have dropped eight straight. They’re without Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio and maybe not Nikola Pekovic. They’re not playing well, don’t have much to play for anyway and are really just looking forward to the offseason. So in other words, this is a scary game. Keep Reading…

It’s tornado time in Oklahoma and unless you’re a native Oklahoman, it can be a stressful, anxious time. So with most Thunder players being out-of-towners, I thought I’d ask a few about it.

“I haven’t,” KD said on if he’s ever been through one. “I haven’t. I better knock on some wood (knocks on his locker). But I haven’t been through one. We’ve been dodging them since I’ve been here. We’ve missed two or three.”

And wouldn’t you know it, the team is in Minnesota tonight meaning they’ve dodged what appears to be another run of severe Oklahoma weather.

Said Thabo: “Not quite. I’ve been through a hailstorm about a year and a half ago that was pretty big, but no tornadoes and I hope it stays that way … I’m a little worried about them. Growing up in Switzerland the most we had was high winds and stuff like that. But tornadoes, you see stuff like that on TV and it’s pretty worrying. [In Switzerland] we didn’t have anything like tornadoes.” Keep Reading…